Double chapel
The double chapel or double church (in the broader sense) is a building with two mutually used cult rooms or chapels with different liturgical functions arranged one above the other . Usually there is a celebration church on the upper floor above a burial chapel in the basement.
architecture
In this special form of sacred architecture, used in medieval European architecture up to the 13th century , the two church rooms are built on floors one above the other, mostly with identical floor plans, but there are also exceptions such as the St. Ulrich Palatine Chapel in Goslar.
The earlier assignment of the two chapel floors, which assumed a “separation between the lower and upper social classes of the Middle Ages”, in which the lower chapel was assigned to the “common people” and the upper chapel to the “feudal lords”, cannot be substantiated by any evidence. Instead, there is a distinction between a "public" lower chapel, in which the ruler celebrated a mass with his guests before official acts or during "state visits", and a "private" upper chapel, in which the ruler's family could attend the service, or an upper chapel , which was reserved for the court service, and a lower chapel as a grave room, which also served the funeral masses. In these Romanesque chapels, the upper and lower chapels are usually connected to one another by a floor opening in the upper chapel that is usually extended to a secondary extent.
The double chapel found numerous successors, especially as Karner, the combination of cemetery chapel and ossuary , and in numerous two-storey cemetery chapels in southern Germany, Austria and Bohemia. As pure cemetery chapels, double chapels have mostly been consecrated to Saint Michael . After the failure of the feudal crusades, the lower chapel took on the character of a chapel carner as a late Gothic healing chapel with a civil memorial chapel (e.g. Kiedrich or Görlitz).
Meaning of the double chapels as a status symbol
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What is noticeable about the castle complexes on which (known / preserved) double chapels were built is that they are generally castles of the secular or spiritual high nobility. So the castle complexes of counts, landgraves, margraves, dukes, bishops or dioceses as well as around imperial castles and palaces of kingship. From this it was concluded that double chapels played an important role in representing the class of these noble gentlemen in the High Middle Ages.
An example of a double chapel in a royal palace is the preserved double chapel of the imperial palace and later castle in Eger .
When the remains of a Romanesque double chapel were discovered in Upper Greiz Castle , the former Greiz Castle , in the years 2005-2006 , this was classified as a sensation in castle research, since Greiz Castle (probably around 1190) was the official seat of a family of ministers (at the time the lower nobility) , the governors of Weida and Plauen was established. Although the bailiffs "only" managed state castles and lordships such as Weida , Plauen and Eger on behalf of the kingship , they obviously did not want to do without a representative double chapel at their new ancestral castle in Greiz. The residential tower and the hall with the double chapel contained therein are said to have been faced with red brickwork on the outside, although the locally available limestone would have been cheaper as a building material.
On the Neuchâtel the Thuringian Landgrave was in 1180 in the main castle keep demolished to make way for the construction of the double chapel to create (probably at the same time two new Bergfriede were built in both forecourts). Here the need for representation outweighed the need for security to have a keep in the inner castle.
In 1520, the Dukes of Mecklenburg had a new lower chapel built into a former gatehouse with an existing high medieval upper chapel (from 1280) at Stargard Castle , creating a double chapel that has only survived in fragments.
Examples
Germany
Most of the time the double chapels were built in Staufer palaces or castles , but also in monasteries . Some well-known examples are given below.
Baden-Württemberg
- Double chapel St. Sebastianus , with rich decorations from 1474, Tauberbischofsheim
Bavaria
- Erasmus Chapel (St. Erasmus and St. Michael), Kempten
- Double chapel of St. Trinitatis and Johannes Nepomuk in the castle ruin Breitenstein , Königstein-Breitenstein
- Chapel of the Nuremberg Imperial Castle , Nuremberg
- St.Jacobus , Schondorf am Ammersee
Hesse
- St. Michael , as the earliest proven example in Germany, Fulda
- St. Catherine's Chapel in Greifenstein Castle with a Gothic substructure, a result of construction work when the castle church in Greifenstein was converted to baroque style
- Michaelskapelle (1444) with Karner, Kiedrich
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
- Remains of a double chapel at Stargard Castle , created around 1520 by installing a lower chapel under the already existing upper chapel (from 1280), town of " Burg Stargard "
Lower Saxony
- Goslar Palatine Chapel St. Ulrich , Goslar
- Chapel in the St. Ludgeri Monastery , Helmstedt
North Rhine-Westphalia
- St. Peters Chapel, Netphen
- Double chapel at Rheda Castle , simplified pillar-less room, Rheda-Wiedenbrück
- Double church of St. Clemens , synthesis of the gallery rotunda and court chapel of the Archbishops of Cologne while maintaining the separation of the burial chapel and the celebration church, Schwarzrheindorf
Rhineland-Palatinate
- Chapel in the Romanesque keep of the Reichsburg Trifels , Annweiler am Trifels , see Königskapelle (Trifels)
- Nikolauskapelle in the Kaiserpfalz , Kaiserslautern
- Palace Chapel St. Gotthard at Mainz Cathedral as a court chapel in its most perfect form, Mainz
- Double chapel St. Emmeram and St. Katharina in the cathedral , Speyer
- former double church St. Simeon of the Porta Nigra with the grave of St. Simeon in the lower chapel, Trier
Saxony
- Double chapel to the Holy Cross (after 1465) of the Holy Sepulcher with the Adam's chapel as the lower chapel and the Golgotha chapel as the upper chapel, Görlitz
Saxony-Anhalt
- Chapel at Neuchâtel Castle , as a four-pillar room based on the Byzantine model, Freyburg
- St. Crucis Chapel is the only remaining building from the former Landsberg Castle , Landsberg
- Double chapel St. Nikolaus, Nienburg
Thuringia
- Chapel in the Predigerkirche, Eisenach
- Remains of a Romanesque double chapel, Greiz, discovered in 2005/2006 in the Upper Castle (Greiz) (Romanesque portal with columns, the upper chapel, wall niches of the lower and upper chapel and the beginnings of the former ribbed vault of the upper chapel)
- Chapel at Lohra Castle , Großlohra
Other countries in Europe
- Bishop's Chapel Hereford in England (1079-1095), Hereford , Great Britain - the oldest surviving example of two chapels connected by a floor opening
- Double chapel in Vianden Castle , Vianden , Luxembourg
- Double chapel St. Ulrich and St. Nikolaus in the Benedictine monastery St. Johann , Müstair , Switzerland
- Double chapel at the Imperial Palace Eger Castle , Cheb , Northwest Bohemia - the only known double chapel in the Czech Republic
- Double chapel of San Claudio al Chienti (around 1030), Corridonia ( Macerata ), Marken - oldest double chapel in Italy
Armenia
- Original construction of the Saint Hripsime Church in Etchmiadzin , at the end of the 4th century
- First burial church for Mesrop Mashtots in Oshakan , middle of the 5th century
- Church of Our Lady ( Surb Astvatsatsin ) in Jeghward , early 14th century
- Church of Our Lady ( Surb Astvatsatsin ) in Noravank Monastery , from 1331–1339
- Kaputan's burial church (near Abovjan ), dated 1349
See also
literature
- Oscar Schürer: Romanesque double chapels. A type-historical investigation. In: Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 5, 1929, pp. 99–192.
- Gerhard Strauss, Harald Olbrich (ed.): Lexicon of Art. Architecture, fine arts, applied arts, industrial design, art theory. EA Seemann, Leipzig 1989, ISBN 3-363-00286-6 , Vol. 2 (Cin-Gree), p. 193 f.
- Mathias Haenchen: The medieval building history of the Goslar Palatine Chapel St. Ulrich. Dissertation TU Braunschweig 1998. Braunschweig 1998.
